How Vista Mistakes Changed Windows 7 Development 483
snydeq writes "For the past several months, Microsoft has engaged in an extended public mea culpa about Vista, holding a series of press interviews to explain how the company's Vista mistakes changed the development process of Windows 7. Chief among these changes was the determination to 'define a feature set early on' and only share that feature set with partners and customers when the company is confident they will be incorporated into the final OS. And to solve PC-compatibility issues, Microsoft has said all versions of Windows 7 will run even on low-cost netbooks. Moreover, Microsoft reiterated that the beta of Windows 7 that is now available is already feature-complete, although its final release to business customers isn't expected until November." As a data point for how well this has all worked out in practice, reader The other A.N.Other recommends a ZDNet article describing rough benchmarks for three versions of Windows 7 against Vista and XP. In particular, Win-7 build 7048 (64-bit) vs. Win-7 build 7000 (32-bit and 64-bit) vs. Vista SP1 vs. XP SP3 were tested on both high-end and low-end hardware. The conclusions: Windows 7 is, overall, faster than both Vista and XP. As Windows 7 progresses, it's getting faster (or at least the 64-bit editions are). On a higher-spec system, 64-bit is best. On a lower-spec system, 32-bit is best.
Vista SP2 (Score:0, Insightful)
They are marketing the name Windows 7 which is really Windows Vista SP2.
Mind Boggling Legacy Junk Still In Win 7 (Score:1, Insightful)
How the hell can it be 2009 and Microsoft still has:
* DOS era drive letters for volumes?
* The perfectly wrong choice of \ vs / for path names?
* The Win 3 era maximize button on windows?
* Files that can't be move when they are open by another application?
We are all going to be drinking Tang while going to work in our flying cars and this legacy garbage will still be in Windows.
Captain Obvious descends (Score:5, Insightful)
"How Vista Mistakes Changed Windows 7 Development"
You got it wrong: Vista was the mistake that caused Windows 7 development.
Credit where its due (Score:5, Insightful)
Whitewashing (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft is basically doing a Vista service pack with Windows 7, but they have put out a TON on press on sites like Digg and Slashdot to change the mental landscape around Windows 7 with consumers and the core technical crowd. At this point I'm pretty skeptical of every pro Windows 7 article and poster, though of course by now you'd expect Vista to have been improved.
Re:Let's see it against Ubuntu 9.04 (Score:2, Insightful)
From the summary: "...Microsoft has said all versions of Windows 7 will run even on low-cost netbooks..."
This is a fairly meaningless statement, as it winds up being self-defining.
"all versions of Windows 7", but no mention of which parts of Win7 will function and/or be disabled
"run" is inherently subjective
"low-cost netbooks" certainly doesn't refer to the netbooks you can go out and buy today. It's the ones 9-12 months from now, with faster CPUs and GPUs, more RAM, larger HDs. Effectively, it's referring to today's notebooks, which are next years netbooks
Assuming 'netbook' is still allowed to be used generically, and no longer trademarked by whatsitsname...
Re:Will run on netbooks or drag? (Score:5, Insightful)
My six year old laptop can run Windows 7 acceptably. It's not fast, but it's good enough to be usable for email, web-browsing, even YouTube videos. Therefore, I'd expect W7 to run fine on netbooks.
That said, there's the question of why you'd want it on a netbook. It's different enough from previous versions of the OS that your grandma would probably prefer to just use XP, like she has been for years. And if the user is willing to accept a change, why pay for W7 when you can use some form of Linux, custom tailored for netbooks?
The main draw of Windows is compatibility with all the apps out there. Netbooks aren't going to be running those apps, so why bother with Windows?
Re:release date (Score:3, Insightful)
OSX 10.6 counts as a new OS release? Isn't that a bit like saying that Win 98SE was a new version of Windows? Yes technically they are, but it's hardly a rewrite or necessarily a must have update.
I'm hardly a fan of Windows, but that's kind of a odd standard to apply. MS could definitely keep up if they were making such minimal updates and charging for them.
Re:release date (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think I am. I'm considering the total level of satisfaction with a Windows 7-based system, a Snow Leopard system, and a Ubuntu 9.10 system.
For example, I consider the difficulty/inability to run iTunes on Ubuntu to be a relevant factor when considering Ubuntu vs. W7. On the other hand, the ready availability of a bizillion applications on Ubuntu affects my happiness regarding my choice of operating systems as well.
No argument there.
Re:Will run on netbooks or drag? (Score:4, Insightful)
I want a tablet netbook to use as an ebook (txt, html or pdf) reader, to open some excel files in meetings, and not much more.
I already have two powerful desktops with big screens. And totally agree with you.
Re:release date (Score:1, Insightful)
What you call higher standards are artificial barriers. You live in them for some time, you forget about them.
Okay, here's an "artificial barrier": You're an IT administrator for a bank. You support about 35 mission-critical applications that go to a mainframe. Why keep the mainframe? Because it's the only thing that's gone through the laborous process of being documented, audited, and certified for use. Those certifications could run into the tens of millions of dollars, plus another fifty million to retool your existing infrastructure, minimum. All those applications were written for Windows 95.
Now, Microsoft is a safe bet because you know those applications were written decades ago and will still work. They're horrible, out of date, and make your butt itch just thinking about them, but they work, and it's cheaper to keep them going than to invest in an all-new infrastructure. But you go with Apple, or Linux and what do you get? Every five years, maybe ten if you're lucky, you have to rebuild and redesign everything to make it work with the latest and greatest.
Microsoft delivers what businesses want: Reliability. Long. Term.
And that costs money, time, effort, and yes... it's a MUCH higher standard to reach for.
Release cycle is not a measure of quality (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't expect 7 to be a good operating system, but the time between releases is a very poor indicator of OS quality and performance. Some distributions, like Ubuntu, release small increments often, while Debian release less often but each update usually marks a bigger change. In addition they both cower the other release cycles separately. Ubuntu has LTS releases for those that need stability. Debian has the testing and unstable versions for those that want more up to date stuff. Apple seems to have found a decent compromise where they release semi-often and have a reasonably stable system, giving their users a reasonably up to date system with acceptable stability.
Windows, on the other hand, tends to release rarely, and still have moderate improvements, and then change the system with service packs. You basically get the worst of both worlds. You don't get the latest and greatest features that you may have got with something like Ubuntu, when released Windows tends to be even more outdated than Debian stable , but it has nowhere near the stability since each service packs tends to fundamentally alter many critical aspects of the system ( WGA, UAC, new IE version etc... ).
I think a lot of Microsoft's problems is that they try to target both the curious power users, office users and business with the same releases. You can't realistically have a OS release that is going to be cutting edge over its life cycle, while simultaneously being stable and well tested. You will either have to compromise or do separate releases. Ubuntu, Debian and RedHat seem to be doing well having separate releases for different users, Apple seems to be managing the compromise rather well, Microsoft just fails horribly at doing either.
Re:Will Windows 7 support the devices I already ha (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Epson choose to not support your scanner any more. It's not Microsoft's fault that a 3rd party decided not to fully support your hardware with drivers for the latest OS. Vista would support it perfectly fine if Epson would write drivers for it, but they are banking on you choosing to buy a newer model scanner.
Don't blame Microsoft for Epson's greed.
Re:OK, so we fucked up. It's good now, really! (Score:2, Insightful)
Every version of windows before that was just fine with verifying your old media and then installing. What moron thought this was an improvement? Did these guys even TRY the upgrade path? This was my introduction to Vista. It just went downhill from there.
I was then introduced to the joys of Vista. It's flaws have been discussed to death. I can at least say it did two good things for me. It introduced me to Linux again which was a refreshing change from the early 90's, and it prompted me to switch to Mac.
At this point I could care less about Windows 7. Too little, too expensive, too late.
Re:Let's see it against Ubuntu 9.04 (Score:3, Insightful)
After getting sued over the whole "Vista-Ready" program, I expect Microsoft will be at least a little bit more careful with their subjective definition of "run".
The issue, if there will be one, will probably be with licensing. A previous article had suggested that MS will release a lower-cost version of Win7 that's geared towards netbook users that will impose an artificial limitation of 3 apps running at once. Which is unusually stupid for Microsoft, as that kind of thing could push more people towards browser-based web apps, rather than their desktop counterparts (Google Docs vs Office, for example) - as if the crazy cost of MS Office wasn't enough of a deterrent, now its competition doesn't eat up one of your three allowed apps because you already had a browser open? Idiots.
I mean, I guess MS is at least trying to "get" why people like netbooks (cheap), but that kind of stupid artificial limitation won't win them many brownie points. I think two versions of Windows (like XP, holy crap!) is plenty - home and pro/office. And the only difference should be that the home version can't join a domain. Charge $99 for Win7 Home like Apple does for OS X and call it a day. Simple, reasonably-priced, and it won't piss people off.
Re:release date (Score:5, Insightful)
What are you? Another Microsoft marketing/misinformation drone? Or have you just been brainwashed?
You're an IT administrator for a bank. You support about 35 mission-critical applications that go to a mainframe. [...] All those applications were written for Windows 95.
And the mainframe is running what? Windows For Mainframes Edition? I don't think so.
Now, Microsoft is a safe bet because you know those applications were written decades ago and will still work.
I disagree. I only use Windows at work, but it is my understanding that it is very difficult to make older Windows applications run in newer versions of Windows, especially applications that were written for Windows 95/98.
But you go with Apple, or Linux and what do you get? Every five years, maybe ten if you're lucky, you have to rebuild and redesign everything to make it work with the latest and greatest.
That's assuming that you keep updating Linux or Mac OS to the latest and greatest. But you don't have to. In your mainframe "example" it is assumed that the system images running the applications are not being updated. And then you complain that Linux/Apple apps may break if you update the OS? Come on.
You might want to change your desktop background to this one [dilbert.com].
Microsoft still goes not get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:release date (Score:5, Insightful)
> Microsoft delivers what businesses want: Reliability. Long. Term.
You clearly don't know what the heck you are babbling on about. You were on target with the mainframe, that is reliability over the long term.
Windows? You think going back to Windows 95 is long term? Bah. Windows 95 wasn't even close to usable until OSR2 and that was practically Win98 and as I recall didn't ship until '97. So a puny dozen years.
> Now, Microsoft is a safe bet because you know those applications were written decades ago and
> will still work. They're horrible, out of date, and make your butt itch just thinking about
> them, but they work, and it's cheaper to keep them going than to invest in an all-new infrastructure.
Small midsize shops are the ones who fell into this trap, usually called Visual Basic. Crappy little apps written by long forgotten consultants. And nobody had enough sense to demand the source code so now changes aren't possible. I have about as much sympathy for these fools as the Masters of the Universe on Wall Street currently reaping their reward for being dumb. You base your business on stuff you can't repair, realize the problem and don't make fixing it a goal. Then someday when it does go foom they will be shocked! shocked! and probably be lining up at the nearest public teat looking for a bailout like the banks.
Oh, and see above about 'decades ago'. Now there ARE some industrial process controls still running DOS that can get over two decades old... barely. Go really get DECADES you have to look at mainframes and COBOL.
> But you go with Apple, or Linux and what do you get? Every five years, maybe ten
> if you're lucky, you have to rebuild and redesign everything to make it work with
> the latest and greatest.
I won't argue about Apple, which is probably why it has had and has no future in the Enterprise outside of the occasional graphics arts dept full of Macheads nobody wants to piss off. Linux/Unix on the other hand.... Do you realize how old UNIX is? Even the POSIX standards predate Win32 and UNIX had a rich history already.... which was sorta the reason for POSIX in the first place but that is another tale for another day. Write to the specs and any end user app will probably be ok for the foreseeable future. Yea if you want to run an old 90s app today you will probably need to scrounge up the Motif libs but they are still available on supported Enterprise distributions. Sure it will LOOK like an old Motif app but then you want it to be the same, ya know, reliable. You could also get even older UNIX applications going but good grief, before Motif X programs were primitive, Gilligans's Island primitive, ugly things.
Re:release date (Score:5, Insightful)
Win95 isn't supported as of 2001. So it's equivalent to old releases of Linux in that regard.
I worked on projects that still run on kernel 2.2 (this is from 1999-2000) as of today. So I can tell you how that works from personal experience. Hardware support is complicated, valgrind doesn't work (which makes debugging C apps a bit of a pain), some things like LVM and RAID are much inferior to their current state, but other than that, it's a perfectly functional system, and most software that's not tightly linked to kernel functionality (like valgrind) works perfectly fine on it.
Nothing stops you from using the latest version of firefox, vim and gcc on 2.2 if you so wish. Try to install IE7 on Win95 though.
I've seen ancient Windows boxes used in the same way, and in my experience it's a lot more unpleasant. At least you can coax Linux to work in unplanned situations, but good luck on getting anything modern installed on a Win95 box. The installer will probably refuse to even try.
You have exactly the same tradeoffs with both systems: Keep it running, even after the vendor pulls support, or keep upgrading. Keep it running for long enough, and eventually you will have to catch up with lots of things at once.
Re:release date (Score:2, Insightful)
Making Windows Faster (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Will run on netbooks or drag? (Score:1, Insightful)
Sorry to go off-topic, but
Always Innovating's Touch Book [venturebeat.com] Might interest you. It is coming out soon. It's a netbook who's screen seperates from it's keyboard (like the HP TC1100). It will be ARM based, lots of battery life (10-15 hours), etc. If I recall correctly, the price point will also be around $200. Sounds right up your alley.
Re:release date (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sorry, and I honestly am not trying to troll here, but are you fucking kidding me???
Long term? Linux supports pretty much the whole POSIX API and, for graphics, X11. Those were mature before Steve Ballmer threw his first chair. Many serious, graphical programs written 20 years ago for Unix still build and run no problem on Linux. And it's a pretty damn good bet that it I write clean Linux code today, it will build in 2019 version of Linux or its successor. Tried running a Win16 program lately? Or tried lately accessing a web page written in their proprietary dialects of HTML from back in the browser war days? Good luck being able to use those web applications with the browsers that are available in 20 years.
Reliability? Windows servers have historically needed a period reboot, just because. The DoD recently disallowed USB thumbdrives on any of their computers. Hint: it wasn't because of the Linux computers. And what would you rather hook up to the open internet for 24 hours after installing the operating system: Windows XP, or Linux?
Or maybe you're referring to their steadfast trustworthiness as a company. Surely we can trust their products because as a company they're so wise, right? Like their decision to encourage web page designers to include ActiveX controls on the web pages? Or how many apps broke when Vista was rolled out?
I must concede, though, that Linux might just not be ready for mission [google.com] critical [nytimes.com] deployments [linuxjournal.com].
I can't speak about Apple stuff, but for Linux, who cares if the people shipping a distribution needed to re-compile 50% of the apps when preparing a release, because of some library ABI change? When you have the source code to the apps, and someone else (the distro maintainers) recompile everything for you anyway, it. just. doesn't. matter.
Re:release date (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, here's an "artificial barrier": You're an IT administrator for a bank. You support about 35 mission-critical applications that go to a mainframe. Why keep the mainframe? Because it's the only thing that's gone through the laborous process of being documented, audited, and certified for use. Those certifications could run into the tens of millions of dollars, plus another fifty million to retool your existing infrastructure, minimum. All those applications were written for Windows 95.
Now, Microsoft is a safe bet because you know those applications were written decades ago and will still work. They're horrible, out of date, and make your butt itch just thinking about them, but they work, and it's cheaper to keep them going than to invest in an all-new infrastructure. But you go with Apple, or Linux and what do you get? Every five years, maybe ten if you're lucky, you have to rebuild and redesign everything to make it work with the latest and greatest.
Microsoft delivers what businesses want: Reliability. Long. Term.
And that costs money, time, effort, and yes... it's a MUCH higher standard to reach for.
Whoever thought this was insightful, isn't.
Your use of "Mainframe" could have client apps written in anything. In fact, you fail to point out what the mainframe is running. If, as you claim in your hypothetical, the mainframe system is the part that's documented, you can always write a conforming client on just about anything, yes, windows included but linux and MacOs as well.
As a real-world proof, I've assisted building a web application that interfaces with a legacy PIC database and replaced proprietary desktop apps with a thin net client. After our work, what OS is required by the millions of users? We don't care, any browser made after 1998 could run the app, on any OS that runs the browser.
If you fail to see this, you deserve to pay Redmond every dime you already obviously do.
Re:release date (Score:1, Insightful)
But you go with Apple, or Linux and what do you get? Every five years, maybe ten if you're lucky, you have to rebuild and redesign everything to make it work with the latest and greatest.
I'm going through exactly the opposite -- specifically, web apps running on Windows 2000 Server. Running great, I might add -- not the latest and greatest, but they work with very little trouble.
But wow, next year Windows 2000 Server is going out of extended support -- which means my web servers will be sitting ducks with the first unpatchable IIS 5 exploit. (Hah hah, you folks are laughing -- IIS 5 and you think you're *not* a sitting duck already? Shut up. Servers patched are properly configured, web apps are solidly written, it holds up to abuse just fine.)
So I have to upgrade everything to Server 2008. Which means shelling out for the OS upgrades. Oh, and new servers, of course! Can't expect the old boxes to handle the Vista of server OSs. New IIS 7 is a pain to set up. New .NET presents a host of issues. Basically, a PITA for no good reason -- I'd happily keep the old servers running. With Windows, longevity of a setup like that is not an option -- built-in obsolescence. If the whole thing had been set up on BSD or Debian to begin with, I wouldn't have had this problem. (Yes, I might well have had plenty of *other* problems. But not this one.)
Re:Mind Boggling Legacy Junk Still In Win 7 (Score:4, Insightful)
I use the maximise button all the time, and I'm writing this on a widescreen flat panel at 1920x1200.
Some of us don't like having borders and similar wasted pixels around the outside of our windows and don't necessarily want to work with fifteen virtual desktops. Personally, I prefer to concentrate on one thing at once, rather than constantly hopping around between several applications. For when I do want to multitask, well, that's what the other buttons are for.
Now, I would much prefer a window manager that could "lock" windows into some sort of tiled zone, so I can expand two windows to fill half my screen each, and some smart mouse handling so the pointer half-locks-on to things like scroll bars at the edge of those windows even if it's not the edge of the screen. And a decent notification system that was unintrusive but a bit cleaner than XP's current effort would go down well; I have no idea what they've done with that in Vista, since I have no intention of putting Vista on any PC I own. Maximise is certainly not the be-all and end-all of windowing UI, but it's still very useful.
Re:release date (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, I consider the difficulty/inability to run iTunes on Ubuntu to be a relevant factor when considering Ubuntu vs. W7. On the other hand, the ready availability of a bizillion applications on Ubuntu affects my happiness regarding my choice of operating systems as well.
I don't know what you're ranting about here but iTunes runs in Wine if you really need to have it. There are also a bunch of alternatives that you can use which do a lot of similar things to iTunes (AmaroK is I think the closest)
Each new release of OS X might, at best, be compared to a service pack.
That's Microsoft FUD and pure BS. It's the same as saying that Linux kernel 2.6 is a service pack to 2.4. There are a lot of differences between the several versions including but not limited to the kernel. Tiger for example was a 32-bit kernel with the ability to compile and run 64-bit apps and Classic. Leopard has fully 64-bit toolchains and frameworks and removed Classic support while Snow Leopard will be fully 64-bit (based on current pre-releases). Maybe you don't necessarily 'see' the developments because quite honestly, the GUI's for nearly all platforms are fairly mature (and don't necessarily need to be changed a lot like XP -> Vista just to make a difference) but on the inside and performance wise there is a lot of progress to be made on all platforms.
Re:Will Windows 7 support the devices I already ha (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not Microsoft's fault that a 3rd party decided not to fully support your hardware with drivers for the latest OS.
It's not Microsoft's fault.
It is Microsoft's problem, if they want people with hardware older than a couple of years to upgrade to that latest OS.
The obvious way to solve this problem would be to implement standard interfaces for device drivers that were supported across all OS versions, at least for major categories of hardware that many people have, but for some strange reason Microsoft seem to be incapable of doing this even though just about every other OS in history has managed it.
Re:release date (Score:3, Insightful)
Between now and then, Apple will likely have released OS X 10.6, and there will have been two new release of Ubuntu.
I wonder what's moving faster: Microsoft, or the goal posts?
Like most new OS releases, those are likely to only move the goal posts side-to-side. For the most part I imagine the same may be true of 7, but my point is that real meaningful advances in new OS releases are rare.
Re:Will Windows 7 support the devices I already ha (Score:4, Insightful)
No. Epson choose to not support your scanner any more. It's not Microsoft's fault that a 3rd party decided not to fully support your hardware with drivers for the latest OS. Vista would support it perfectly fine if Epson would write drivers for it, but they are banking on you choosing to buy a newer model scanner.
Don't blame Microsoft for Epson's greed.
But you might reasonably blame Microsoft for developing an ecosystem in which each vendor keeps the source to his own drivers, but with no obligation to update those drivers to be compatible with future OS releases.
This is an area where Linux generally does much much much much better. For example, ATI is soon to stop supporting some of their old cards. For Windows users, this means that in not many years, new versions of Windows won't work with those cards. In contrast, and Linux user that uses those cards has an open source driver for them, and it's very probably that the driver maintainer will choose to keep the driver up to date, even as Linux's driver interface evolves. This feature of the Linux ecosystem really is just much better than what the Windows ecosystem offers.
Re:release date (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm hardly a fan of Windows
Well I don't consider myself to be an Apple fanboi either.
OSX 10.6 counts as a new OS release
Well uh.. yes? To be honest I really haven't paid any attention to the Snow leopard so I cannot argue with you on that, but for example: Tiger -> Leopard was a pretty big change. Just because Apple doesn't change every f**king thing everywhere in the user interface (XP -> Vista) doesn't mean there hasn't been major new features or improvements under the hood.
I'm hardly a fan of Windows, but that's kind of a odd standard to apply. MS could definitely keep up if they were making such minimal updates and charging for them.
What?? Isn't that exactly what Microsoft is doing with the Windows 7. As far as I know Windows 7 is the VISTA SP2. Everything under the hood is Vista. Or do you think Microsoft just rewrote everything in this sort time? Cut the amount of services starting at the boot process, cut down amount of programs installed by default.. do some user interface tweaks, tweak that a bit.. TA-DAAAAAAAAA. Ooh! Windows 7!! And I bet my tiny balls W7 ain't gonna be very cheap either and not to mention the 666 different versions of it. Sorry, I don't mean to start a OS-war but Windows does cause my blood to start boiling now days and as much I hate admitting it... I bought the Windows Vista. *gasp*. I feel so violated. But in more serious note, I don't understand the OS X pay-for-service-packs-bashing I have seen in couple of comments and the same time people basicly praise Microsoft for delivering the Vista as it should have been delivered in the first place.
And to Grammar Nazis:. I know, I know, my English "skills" suck ass.
Re:Will run on netbooks or drag? (Score:1, Insightful)
It's different enough from previous versions of the OS that your grandma would probably prefer to just use XP, like she has been for years.
And if Grandma has never used a computer before?
Re:release date (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't matter how good the alternatives are if it will cost them more money to switch than to keep it as-is. [...] The only thing that matters is "We've used this for X years, and dammit, we're not changing."
But then you have no point. You're talking about not upgrading a system because an application might break. There goes your argument about backwards compatibility.
Not you and I, we're geeks, but we're not making decisions
Talk for yourself.
Re:release date (Score:4, Insightful)
You clearly don't know what the heck you are babbling on about. You were on target with the mainframe, that is reliability over the long term.
Take any linux binary compiled 10 years ago and run it today on a shipping kernel. Oh wait... you can't. Do the same under Macintosh. Oh wait... can't.
You think going back to Windows 95 is long term?
No, I think it's retarded. But there are a lot of embedded systems that run things as old as freaking DOS... still in production, still no plans to upgrade. Pray tell, why do you think that is?
And nobody had enough sense to demand the source code...
Oh, they can demand. And any business is going to say "Yeah... Right. Give up the only leverage we have on your balls? ha ha." Only they'll be more tactful about it.
You base your business on stuff you can't repair, realize the problem and don't make fixing it a goal. Then someday when it does go foom they will be shocked! shocked! and probably be lining up at the nearest public teat looking for a bailout like the banks.
I can't repair my car. Doesn't mean I don't drive one.
Linux/Unix on the other hand.... Do you realize how old UNIX is?
Somehow I don't think binaries compiled under Solaris will run under Linux. Binaries compiled for the Alpha architecture won't run under x86... and so on, and so on. I'm talking about binary compatibility, and that's what Microsoft delivers, version to version, year by year. Even Vista, the horrible failure that it was, bloated and crusty... still backwards compatible back to windows 3.1. It's disgusting, frankly... But that's what the customers ask for, that's what they get. You try running anything from thirty years ago on a recently-released "unix/linux" anything. Oh yeah: No source code. Binaries only. -_- You can rail on about technology improvements, and how this operating system does xyzzy so much better, and blah blah blah, but at the end of the day, the number one reason why Microsoft is in business is "Backwards compatibility". Your examples don't have it... Not out of the box, not without a helluva lot of work, and a lot of expertise that just doesn't exist in bulk anymore.
Exactly!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Is anyone else reminded of the 'new coke' saga when they hear about Windows 7?
I hadn't thought of it before you raised the point but that is the perfect analogy. Vista is Microsoft's "New Coke" - in fact think of the name, without "Windows" really in it like Windows98 or WindowsXP (Sure the name is official "Windows Vista" but everyone just uses Vista).
So Microsoft has to give us a new Windows to take away the taste of the ill-received one.
Re:Will run on netbooks or drag? (Score:3, Insightful)
Netbook is a crossover between the standard laptop and PDA.
With 7's 3-app limit netbooks certainly would be glorified PDAs, and honestly it probably won't get in the way very often. But...
It is a computer. With all the flexibility inherent in computers not found in most PDAs or phones.
Running Linux, it can be a (mobile) Internet Appliance, a router, a firewall, a wireless access point, a web server, a front-end or a node in a beowulf cluster or render farm, a systems monitor, an email server, a cheap NAS, a multimedia player, a VoIP phone, a pet [xkcd.com], a...
Re:Vista SP2 (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:release date (Score:4, Insightful)
And the mainframe is running what? Windows For Mainframes Edition? I don't think so.
Are you familiar with the client/server model? It allows a client application on effectively any OS to communicate with a server application on effectively any OS, provided they share a common network protocol. This isn't exactly a new development. So getting your "AIG Accounting '95" communicating with your AIX mainframe isn't really that implausible, or even difficult.
I disagree. I only use Windows at work, but it is my understanding that it is very difficult to make older Windows applications run in newer versions of Windows, especially applications that were written for Windows 95/98.
Not entirely accurate. Applications that just use the basic Windows APIs, such as the GUI framework and the TCP/IP stack are pretty solid going a very long way back. This tend to get difficult when you throw in DirectX (and the graphics driver that is going alongside it, which was never designed with running 90's era games in mind), or various other "secondary" APIs that aren't really core for basic applications, which really, is what is going to be running in the context of the GP. The hardcore processing and the real complexity is server-side anyway.
That's assuming that you keep updating Linux or Mac OS to the latest and greatest. But you don't have to. In your mainframe "example" it is assumed that the system images running the applications are not being updated. And then you complain that Linux/Apple apps may break if you update the OS? Come on.
You effectively do have to if you care for things like security updates, bug fixes, and product support. This applies to all operating systems. Where's the assumption that the system images running the applications are not being updated? Of course they're being updated, that's the whole point of what the GP is trying to get across, that he can update the OS without breaking the applications he wants to run on it.
Windows will never run on ARM devices (Score:1, Insightful)
Windows will never in nearest future run on ARM devices that are quite better then atom-based ones especially in energy consumption. I have ARM based Nokia N810 that works DAYS in online mode. It can run almost any linux application compiled for it and fits my shirt pocket.
I think that M$ will lose more and more in this market and Win7 can't help here whatever they change in it's development model. Dinosaurs were once big and scarry. Where they are now? :)
Re:Credit where its due (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Vista SP2 (Score:3, Insightful)
Which 1 month old printer is it? A make and model would be appreciated, it's the kind of information that is useful to know. I don't run vista, i'm not a fan , but really the lack of a printer driver isn't a vista issue but an issue with your printer manufacturer.
Unless of course what you meant to say was, Vista doesn't come with a printer driver built in, for your 1 month old printer. Thats just unfortunate the hardware was released after Vista got its release and the driver has to be installed from the manufacturers driver disk or downloaded from some website.
Now you could argue in the interests of windows security and ease of use, that Microsoft should maintain a site with installers for latest drivers for all hardware that works with it's operating system. heck it could even have a system where it checked driver versions and informed you an update was available.
but what kind of an organisation would do something like that ;)
Re:Most Expensive Service Pack Ever (Score:3, Insightful)
No, that was Windows ME ;-)
The Edsel is a remarkably apt comparison for Vista. A huge development effort, a lot of hype, some great new ideas, some terrible new ideas, rather too pricey, not as reliable as it should have been, some appalling design flaws and a name that has resonated through culture since as synonymous with "lemon by design."
The Comet - which was an Edsel by design, make no mistake, but polished and usable - was a huge hit because they disassociated it with the Edsel and corected the most glaring Edsel design flaws, so its qualities could come out.
I've been trying the Windows 7 beta. I'm not a fan of Microsoft by a long shot, but it's not too bad. It's very responsive and usable, and it's SO PRETTY. It's damn fat, and it's painfully slow to boot ... but it's not quite the lemon Vista was.
Re:So I read TFA (Score:3, Insightful)